


Oh Grey Warden

by Herbrarian



Series: New Orders [19]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Chant of Light, Drug Addiction, F/M, Herald's Rest, Loss, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Skyhold, Song Lyrics, Tavern, faith - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5957479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herbrarian/pseuds/Herbrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Previously: Blackwall’s leaving was a betrayal, and made the decisions from Adamant harder to reconcile, but Dorothea has found peace at a cost she didn't expect.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tired, but renewed by the close of the day, Dorothea Trevelyan looks out of the windows of her rooms. She is so grateful to be back in Skyhold, even if it means towering stacks of paper from Josephine that never seem to end. Crestwood and Caer Bronach had gone successfully, but it left more questions on the table than it answered and it had taken at least three baths to get the smell of swamp and rotting corpse off of her skin.

She bundles away the last of the letters, rises, and heads down into the keep, thinking about the report she is finishing for the historian and his chronicle. It still seemed absurd that anyone would find some of the mundane tasks she performed in the field-- checking on a naturalist or finding a wayward druffalo--interesting or even worth recording as Inquisition work, but Josephine was insistent that everything they did be recorded so that it could eventually be remembered. Sighing inwardly, she knew that Josephine was right. Many times in the Circle she, herself, had studied the travels of some ancient mage to better understand a theoretical principle, the application of a life being exemplified in the work. It still rankled though that someone hundreds of years from now would be picking apart her actions.

No, the more pressing problems from Crestwood had been the discovery of double agents among Leliana’s ranks. Leliana’s matter of fact acceptance about the whole thing indicated she should probably expect it at this point. It had been brutal to reach Butcher as he drew his last breaths. The treachery worried her, so different from the death of a soldier on the battlefield.

But there were no resources available to track down that particular problem, let alone to find the still missing mayor of Crestwood. Dorothea agreed with Cullen and felt inclined to let that one go and the Blight take him. Josephine insisted that if the Inquisitor did not uphold order in the way people expected, the Inquisition would never establish trust. Dorothea did not feel entirely comfortable bearing the responsibility of not only Corypheus, but also with supplying people’s routine sense of law and order.

She appreciated that without the constant influx of Grey Wardens passing through the crossroads, the citizens of Crestwood would struggle to remain content with the Inquisition’s interference. They needed to see someone championing their needs and their grievances. Josephine was right, but it felt a little bit too much like ruling and not like what she intended. The matter still remained undecided.

She absently rubs the calluses on her fingertips as her thoughts drift to the Wardens, all of the Wardens. Adamant had been a disaster; a successful disaster, but a disaster nonetheless. They had bombarded the fort enough to render its defenses open to their entry, and slain so many traitorous Wardens that Inquisition forces had gained purchase and overrun the fort. But at the cost that the fort and the Wardens themselves were now empty shells. She regretted so many things about the siege and its aftermath, but she regretted Stroud most of all. He had seemed like a calculated loss until Blackwall … ceased. That was going to be a problem that she still did not know how to even address.

She crosses the bridge from the main hall tower to Cullen’s watchtower, gratefully breathing in the breeze that comes over the ramparts, closing her eyes as she lifts her face to the sun. She sighs deeply and continues on, crossing the threshold into Cullen’s domain. The crisp-sweet scent of lemon and almond oil mixed with the ever present sharpness of the polish for his armor greets her. As always, it fills her lungs and clears the uncertainties out of her brain, more effective than any Chantry incense. Centered in herself, her shoulders release, Adamant put aside.

Light filters into the dim interior, and he raises his face to the glare from the doorway, never wavering in the instructions he is giving the officer at his side. As he looks at her, she sees the corner of his mouth tug up in a greeting. She lengthens her spine and lifts her head slightly to more fully meet his gaze. It is, of course, mere happenstance that this pushes her breasts forward and emphasizes the leanness of her waist before it dips down to the swell of her hips. As she moves into the room she notices his eyelids lower slightly and she can just discern his tongue lightly touching his lip in an involuntary reaction. She hums softly to herself, content; yes, happenstance …

Cullen finishes and dismisses the officer who leaves without preamble, closing the door behind her. Dorothea crosses the room and bends to look down at the report he had been discussing, slipping her arm around his waist as he gathers her to his side and kisses the top of her head in greeting. His gloves off and his hands bare as he had been doing paperwork, he buries his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck. A shiver of pleasure courses down her spine as he rubs the callous of his thumb against the texture of the small hairs.

“This is the wording of our response on the Warden treaties?” she asks.

“Yes. Josephine and I spent the better part of yesterday and today hashing out the language. I should think the runner between our offices will be grateful this is finally to be delivered.”

Dorothea chuckles to herself at the thought of Varric’s amusement watching this tennis match play itself out. Cullen looks down at her with a skeptical glance, believing she laughs at the wording. She meets his concerned look with a shake of her head and simply says, “Varric.”

“Yes. I’m sure that will be its own chapter in the great chronicle from Master Tethras.”

“Thinking awfully highly of yourself, aren’t you?” Dorothea turns to him, pulling him to face her. “It is supposed to be my story, after all,” she whispers the last, leaning into his mouth and nipping at his bottom lip with her teeth in mock reprimand.

“Well, I would like to think I have a role in your story,” he whispers, folding her into his embrace, his tongue seductively teasing at her lips to ask entry into her mouth, finally licking at her top lip and trapping it between his teeth and tongue, nipping back. Dorothea smiles against his mouth and receives the attention of a deeper kiss.

“That depends,” she teases when they came up for air, “on if you are accommodating to the Inquisitor.”

“Well,” he drawls in her ear, “I shall have to do my very best,” and he bends his head to string a chain of warm, moist kisses around her neck.


	2. Chapter 2

Done sharing their greeting of each other after the long day, Dorothea watches as Cullen tidies his desk, prepares the reports that need attention first in the morning, and extinguishes all of the candles except one for when he comes back in. Then they walk down the rampart stairs, through the main courtyard, and into the hall to eat dinner.

Many people had already come and gone as evening watches began, but a fresh group of Cullen’s soldiers and Leliana’s scouts enter as they do. Cullen is greeted by Lt. Palfrey who invites him and the Inquisitor for a drink in the Herald’s Rest and a round of Blight stories after they sup.

The officer veterans of the Fifth Blight under Cullen’s command relish sharing their war stories with her, delighting in watching her squirm at horrible tales of shrieks and gunlocks. She does still squirm, too, despite all she has seen and done. But there was a comfort in these tales of grim horror told around a fire with a mug of ale in your hand, basking in the warm light of your companions.

After all, she was their Inquisitor, the shining Herald of Andraste who had been delivered from the Fade twice at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, once at Haven, in the heart of Halamshiral, and again at Adamant (or so the stories went). Whether she liked it or not, it made their burdens lighter to share their histories with her. She knew that Cullen encouraged it, this macabre storytelling, and not just because it seemed to bolster the troops’ morale.

No, Dorothea suspected that Cullen also took solace in helping her understand that her fight against the Fade, against the Red Lyrium and the demons, and against Corypheus, himself, was not done alone. No matter how gruesome some of her own tales were, she could stretch out a hand and find five more stories within easy reach that were just as dark.

The worst had been her experience with demons. Very early on, she had nearly been killed by a Despair Demon. She had never seen one face-to-face, only read the most academic (and ultimately unhelpful) accounts in the Ostwick Circle’s library. Noted as being particularly slow with a straight-forward, ranged, ice attack, she had assumed her barriers (always well admired by her fellows in the Circle) would give her an edge.

Nothing, though, could have prepared her for the reality. Some nights she still woke feeling its lance, freezing her in place, willing her to crumble in on herself as it wrapped her in the silence of her family’s abandonment of her to the Circle. The full power of an entity dedicated to undermining meaning and worth in its enemies was only fully appreciable in battle. She fell, the world went black, and she resurfaced later with Dorian over her, trying to rouse her as the screams of the wraiths continued to sound off against Cassandra. They had barely managed to end the cascade of demons, with Dorian pushing magic into the field to allow her to focus the anchor and collapse the rift.

The nightmares from that encounter were always most frequent on the road, so she had mostly managed to hide them from Cullen—or at least the severity of them—until Adamant. It was a poorly kept secret among her companions that her nights on the road were filled with Terrors, sometimes more than her days.

In the camp after the siege but before they disembarked, Cullen did something he so rarely did even at Skyhold. He brought several officers to her for commendation on their valor inside the fortress. They had been instrumental in clearing the Pride Demons that proliferated on the battlements that night and the squadrons allowed her party to move in and quickly on to the confrontation with Erimond. The soldiers’ efforts shortened the time all the Inquisition’s troops spent engaged in the entire mess that was Adamant.

Her exclamation over their technique and prowess resulted in the admission—led she realized later by Cullen’s leading questions to the men—that they had seen similar terrors before in the Blight. Cullen had also made sure that each man had a drink and, as was always the way with old soldiers, they shared old bits and pieces of past encounters and battles as the ale had ebbed out of their cups and into their bellies. It had been a surprisingly relaxing evening. Dorothea had felt the inclusion by these formidable warriors among their ranks and with it a sense of approval by one who would become her own formidable warrior. Cullen rarely shared the story of his own experiences with demons and abominations, but these last months since leaving the Approach he had continued to introduce her to confederates who had faced down a demon and lived to tell the tale.


	3. Chapter 3

So it was to a sense of festivity and continued rituals of camaraderie that Dorothea and Cullen sat down in the tavern with Lt. Palfrey and company for an hour of two of carousing and story besting.

As they entered the Herald’s Rest she greeted Bull and a couple of the Chargers back from the Fallow Mire. Harritt needed a supply of Summer Stone for a new pike design that would be more effective in taking down a warrior’s guard. While the Avvar lunatic no longer bothered the Mire, the persistence of undead rendered the region far from safe, hence the Chargers accompanying Leliana’s scouts and resource parties.

The Chargers were a remarkable band and she was grateful they were able to be a tactical team for the Inquisition, especially for Leliana’s needs. It was one less argument in Council over resources and military assets, which meant more time living in the moment and less time dwelling on the various things that could eventually kill her.

She sat between the lieutenant and his captain, veterans both of the Fifth Blight. They had been stationed in the West, in the Hissing Wastes. Their post had been some of the above ground exits from the abandoned Thaigs to watch for activity coming up from the Deep Roads.

The small party set up on the second floor in the tavern, tucked away from the stairs so as to be out of the way. But the presence of the Inquisitor and the expansive storytelling nature of a slightly inebriated Palfrey meant that a good-sized crowd steadily built up around them. As the tale wound on about a particularly harrowing Hurlock Alpha, the expletives twining out from Palfrey like the ribbon of smoke rolling from the pipe clutched between his teeth, Dorothea looked up and caught Cullen’s eye.

He had risen and given his seat to a guardsman who had fallen while doing repair duty on the ramparts. Cullen leaned against the railing and a support post, his arms casually crossed over his chest, a look of contentment relaxing his shoulders and the tilt of his head. The press around them was so great, she could not follow her impulse to go to stand next to him, slip her hand into the crook of his arm, and lean into his solidity.

Instead, she smiled and gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. He winked in response, a gesture that, if observed by anyone else, would have had them in a double take. The strength of his tactical mind and the practicality of his discipline frequently convinced people that Cullen was overly rigid. But, Dorothea knew that that discipline hid a carefully tuned ear to luck and its distant cousin, whimsy. The coin that now was safely nestled under her breast band in its own pocket attested well enough to the weight he placed on his instincts.

The Chantry may consider such a token in a Templar to be bordering on blasphemy, but she knew better. For someone of long loyalty and stalwart beliefs as Cullen, luck was simply a name given to the Hand of the Maker. After Haven, even she felt inclined to believe it to be luck or the intervention of Andraste that saved her. In the quiet hours when it was just the two of them, he spoke of Haven and the Inquisition’s escape with a sense of the divine miraculous. She never failed to be moved by the wonder in his voice that she came back to them.

He slowly began to reclaim his faith that night, a faith long-abused by the actions of a feckless Chantry. It was odd, actually; it was his disenfranchisement with the Chantry and his former claims that had made her initially feel more trustful of his advice. Unlike the Seeker, Cullen’s open uncertainty about the role of the Chantry and the ability of the old forms of Circles and Templars to suffice in this new order left her feeling very open toward him.

She still struggled with Cassandra’s and Vivienne’s faith in the structures that had made so many hurdles in her own life. Cullen’s reclaiming of his faith after the trek from Haven to Skyhold, far from being off-putting to Dorothea, caused her to regard him even more highly. His calm, center of belief in the Maker propelled him into action and protection for those around him, including herself. It was an endearing quality and a constancy that Dorothea had frequently lacked in her life.

She refocuses on the story in front of her and laughs along with everyone as Palfrey half-crouches, half-stands at the table, miming the wrestling stance he had taken against the Alpha just outside of its grappling range before sinking a dagger from his boot into the Alpha’s eye.

It is everyone’s reaction—jovial shock and good natured disbelief as the Alpha staggered and fell to one knee—that draws her eye to Cullen. He stares over the railing, down to the ground floor of the tavern, his stance preternaturally still, his face curiously devoid of expression. He stands like that for a few moments and springs into motion, heading to the stairs and descending to the ground level below.

She knows she is the only one around the table that notices his departure. Her senses carefully tune into the sounds, smells, and feeling of the Veil around her, trying to find what alarmed Cullen. But there is nothing there.

Palfrey ends his story in the triumphant beheading of the Alpha (she has heard this one before), and Dorothea uses the opportunity to congratulate him and quietly squeeze past the crowd. In the hub-bub as the gathering chatters among themselves about whether or not Palfrey could possibly drop an Alpha with just a dagger, as he implies, or if it was really the beheading he did for good measure that finished off the monstrous Hurlock, she hurries down the stairs seeking out Cullen’s golden hair as she goes.


	4. Chapter 4

Cullen leans against the railing and takes a pleasure he only finds in the most unguarded of moments for either of them, regarding her while she does not know he is. Normally, he never sneaks more than a glance, except when she was sleeping, as her vision almost always tugs to his as soon as he does. But this time she is drawn into the animation of Palfrey’s story (ah, the Alpha; he has heard this one so many times. He doesn’t doubt the man’s truthfulness exactly, but the story gains a mythical quality in the repeated telling), so he indulges himself to study her features while she is so vibrant and focused on her people.

His gaze caresses the loveliness of her face. There is a firmness in her jaw line that is one of the most sensual things about her. In battle it is taut and fierce, calling down electricity and moving the veil as she faces her enemy. In play her smile transforms her jaw, relaxing it and dissipating the hardness into joviality, so that you wait eagerly for the words to tumble forth from her mouth. And he knows from his limited experience with her that that same jaw holds a surprising power and hunger as she meets his advances with kisses wanting to touch and be touched; Maker make it so he had a long-time experience with such kisses.

He closes his eyes and offers a quick prayer, asking an intercession from Andraste to deliver her safe to him again. The unsettled feeling that always plagues him when he thinks about her future and Corypheus floods his belly again. Determined not to taint his time with her in fear and doubt, his eyes fly open. No, it is fine. She is still focused on the story. She does not see his apprehension, his doubt. It is fine.

He shifts his focus to the ground floor below him. The minstrel plays a song he doesn’t immediately recognize. He listens carefully, trying to discern the melody through the growing din. If it is a new song (Maryden was constantly retrieving new tunes from Orlais with the Spymistress’s help), he knows Dorothea will want to hear it.

The strumming melody is just on the edge of his hearing, wiggling a finger of recognition in his brain, but it eludes him still. Suddenly, his mind throws up an image of her silhouetted in the firelight.

_It is night. We are alone. I lift open my eyelids, feel the bed next to me empty and cool. My glance drifts lazily to her as she strums her guitar and makes music notations on the specially prepared paper before her._

His heart leaps; this song is hers, it is something she has made.

His pride in her is almost a tangible force that wants to escape through his laughter. He focuses more closely to see that Maryden had moved from just instrumentation and is singing. There are words? He listens closely, taken with the idea that he alone must know that this melody speaks to him, speaks to all of them, from her.

_She came during the worst of the fever when the blue song had sought to take my mind and my soul forever. I was nearly broken then, a husk. But she came with her fire and expunged the song. For too long I didn’t want anyone, but she is the flame, fire is her water and with her I am warm and safe and strong._

Cullen doesn’t catch the beginning, but he focuses and finally he hears the minstrel’s voice across the din:

Ally or Foe?

Maker only knows.

Ally or Foe?

The Maker only knows.

  


The stronghold lives on,

And the Army’s reborn,

Compelled to forge on.

What will we become?

  


Can you be forgiven

When the cold grave has come?

  


Oh, Grey Warden

What have you done?

The oath you have taken

Is all but broken.

The song twines on, but Cullen doesn’t hear, can’t comprehend, so he tunes it out. His blood roars in his ears and his hands go cold as his mouth dries in apprehension. In horror, it dawns on him what he is hearing. Though he hasn’t heard the words before, the melody fits against them like a second skin, and he knows beyond a doubt that she wrote them both.

It is a eulogy, and it can only be meant for one man. And that man is certainly not him.


	5. Chapter 5

Dorothea starts down the stairs, turns to Krem at the base. “Krem, did you see the Commander?”

“Aye, he stormed out; I’d hate to be the nug humper he was after. Face looked worse than Bull.”

“Hey!” Bull calls out.

“Sorry, Boss. Your face looks worse.”

“Thanks, Krem.”

But Dorothea doesn’t hear them. She pivots on the spot, realizing in horror what Maryden sings. No, it wasn’t, it couldn’t be, she hadn’t been ready. How had Leliana managed this one so quickly? Her mind races.

She heads directly over to Cabot and orders a round of drinks for the officers at the table upstairs. That should keep them from being insulted she’s disappeared and keep them from looking for Cullen, too. She has to find him, she has to explain … whatever she can do to explain.

Bull calls out to her to see if she was fine, if she would join him. But she is already headed to the door, out into the night.

Outside she sees Harding and asks if she saw the direction Cullen had gone. Harding motions into the night, and Dorothea starts up the battlements in the direction of the gesture Harding throws over her shoulder.

The night air is cool, but still heavy with moisture. Autumn creeps in at night, cooling the ground while the stone of the hold still holds the heat and moisture of the day. She takes the stairs two and three at a time, trying to close the distance with Cullen’s longer stride.

It will be fine, she coaches herself. She can explain; he will listen. Maker, he must listen. But calm eludes her and as she draws closer she begins to run. Guards call out to her as she passes, but she ignores them. At Cullen’s office door she doesn’t pause or knock and flings open the door into darkness.

The solitary candle is lit on his desk, just as they had left it little more than an hour or two before. The flame wavers in the draft from the door, but recovers and remains lit. Stepping into the office, she strains into the silence, listening for him in the shadows, for his footfalls above. The only sound to greet her is the thump of her heart.

_I should check the loft._

She crosses to the ladder. Her foot is on the third rung when a tentative voice speaks from the darkness, “Inquisitor?”

It is the guard from outside Cullen’s office, the last one she ran past. She stops.

“Yes, Jonas?”

“The Commander, Sirrah? He isn’t here?” Jonas’s voice pitches uncertainly into the gloom. “He hasn’t returned since you left together?”

With barely a mumble of reply, Dorothea jumps off the ladder, whisks past the befuddled guard, and repeats her steps back toward the tavern.

_I need to retrace._

She starts down the steps. At the landing she is met by Cassandra who is in turn tailed by Bull.

“Inquisitor? What is wrong?” Cassandra’s Nevarran accent demands.

“It’s gone wrong. It’s Cullen,” she babbles. “I didn’t warn him. I didn’t know. He’s fled”

“Inquisitor, calm down. Is he in his rooms?”

“No, I just came from there. Cassandra, I fear for him.” The last she whispers, Dorothea looking Cassandra directly in the eye, wiling her to understand.

_Please, let this come right._

“I will look for him. He will not have left,” Cassandra’s tone softens imperceptibly, an attempt to quiet the Inquisitor.

“But Cassandra,” _I’m whispering now, closing in on her right side with her good ear,_ “that is what happens.”

_A sharp look, it burns my soul. I have betrayed him again with my weakness, but this time merely to the Seeker and to myself._

“With other men, perhaps, but not Cullen. Go to your rooms. I will find you there.”

_I want to interrupt, to shake my head no –_

“You have to stop running around the keep in terror,” and Cassandra gestures up the ramparts where members of the night’s watch have observed this scene, the Inquisitor’s confusion and agitation; but they are just out of earshot.

“You are right.” _Breathe_. “Please find him whole.”

 

* * *

 

_Cassandra disappears into the night and I cannot move my feet. Bull invites me for a drink, but I can’t. I can’t take the chance. What if she can’t find me? What if he can’t find me? Maybe, if I follow the rules now, it will all be fine. Andraste preserve him._

As she walks into the Great Hall, Varric hails her and introduces her to a “business associate” of his from Kirkwall. Varric doesn’t acknowledge (and she pretends not to know) that this is a Charta contact who provides Leliana with much needed information and is one of the Inquisition’s many Lyrium contracts.

The “associate” quickly finishes his ale to make to his tent for the night in the lower camp – “the better to make an early start” (and no doubt engage in some _trade_ ) – and before she can change it, she and Varric are left alone. She hesitates, starts to turn to her rooms, but realizes she can see all of the comings and goings from the courtyards, the tower, the undercroft, the gardens, the council room, all from here. So she stays, not quite ready to be alone.

After several attempts at conversation and Dorothea’s non-committal grunts, Varric is fed up.

“Andraste’s Ass, what’s wrong? You’re grumpier than the Seeker. Where’s Curly? Isn’t he supposed to take point on making your Inquisitorialness cheery?”

_Cullen. I can feel the color drain from my face. Facing into the light of the fire as I am, Varric can’t not notice; he asks again. Haltingly, I tell him the story for the want of telling someone, even if it isn’t the right someone, what I’ve done. I am outside myself, standing by the chair I sit in, watching as I describe the perfectly normal events of the evening that may have dissolved the one holy thing in my existence right now._

“Light, Gidget, you don’t live small, can you?” Varric rubs his chin, and looks off into the fire. “I didn’t know you played. When did you start?”

“When I was a girl. Even in a lesser noble house, a girl child was expected to be accomplished in music. My teacher was a travelling composer with little originality of his own, but a remarkably good grasp of theory. He was happy to teach me to compose when I showed that I actually could think up a tune. When I left for the Circle, he gave me a leather satchel filled with parchment sheets of empty, musical score. The Circle allowed me a mandolin, so I would play and write in the tower.”

_Tower training was rigorous. I was thirteen and had expected to be preparing a trousseau, not learning sprit barrier magic and defending myself from the Fade. I took to writing at night, softly plucking out melodies that stilled my mind to prepare for sleep and what might find me there.  
My days were scheduled and structured beyond my control. But at night, I could travel into a song, bend its rhythm, turn it to a minor key, construct my reality to my mood or reconcile my mood to my reality. It was a habit I had never broken, writing to assuage the fears I felt on a daily basis._

“But why say they’re from Orlais, why not claim …” Varric starts to ask, and the door opening abruptly behind him interrupts. Leliana emerges, doing a double take as she sees the Inquisitor. She bows her head briefly and then hurries out into the night. Dorothea stands up and watches the Nightingale fly into the dark, praying that the other woman is seeking Dorothea’s lion.

Varric steps up behind her to draw her back by the fire. She thanks him, but turns instead and heads to her quarters. It is time to go and wait.


	6. Chapter 6

Cullen adds fuel to the braziers closest to the practice dummies. He will not need a lot of light, but he prefers not to be in the dark on his own. He adjusts his vambrace and rerebrace on his sword arm, unsheathes his sword. He steps onto the training ground and begins in his head the Chant in Exaltations.

_‘Whatsoever passers through the fire / Is not lost, but made eternal;_

He moves through the first form.

_As air can never be broken nor crushed, / The Tempered soul is everlasting!_

20 minutes, 30, 40; the time is unimportant. He cannot think, he cannot take in what he has heard this night, so he retreats into the discipline of drills.

_And I looked up and saw / The seven gates of the Black City shatter,  / And darkness cloaked both realms._

From time to time he pauses and takes a drink from his water skin. The lack of focus lets it in, the blue song, and he returns to his drill. As he moves against the practice dummy, he sees Cassandra enter the ring of light outside of the brazier. She is accompanied by a guardsman, whom she dismisses. He harrows off, as if on an errand. Cullen breaks and heads for his water skin, daring her to speak. She merely nods her head at him, “Commander,” and watches him return to his drill, arms crossed across her breastplate, seemingly watching his technique as if it was the middle of the afternoon and she was inspecting the parade ground.

_I covered my face, fearful, / But the Lady took my hands from my eyes,_

Cullen does not know how to feel that it is Cassandra that found him and not she. But it cannot matter for the moment; the drill, he must complete the drill.

_Saying, “Remember the fire. You must pass / Through it alone to be forged anew._

He works hard against the dummy, willing it to take this quivering, howling pit of fear from him. He wants to be able to walk away from the training ground as solid as the man of straw and burlap opposite him, able to take any blow directed at him. Once he pours his rage into it, Cullen knows then he will be able to walk away; then he’ll be fine.

_Look! Look upon the Light so you / May lead others here through the darkness, / Blade of the Faith!”_

Another figure approaches through the gloom and into the light. Leliana. She and Cassandra bend heads together, Cassandra looking down at the dirt to better catch Leliana’s words while Leliana eyes him as he continues to fight. A moment. Two. Three. And then they lift sharply apart and Cassandra glances up to him and then turns to simply stare out into the darkness, away from the light of the brazier. The fierceness of her regard, though, seems directed at others beyond the light. Obviously, his presence here has not gone unnoticed among the rank and file.

“Commander?”

Leliana’s soft, western accent beseeches his response and demands it.

“Yes?”

_I step back, not wanting to look at her, not bearing to see the sympathy that I believe to be there. I hold my sword loosely in my hand, the point out and away from my body, but I cannot stop my tension, the readiness that I feel to attack._

“I do not think you know what has happened.”

_Without thought, I turn to her and take a step forward, my sword arm tensing. I know I must menace, but I am unable to comprehend her gall. And fearful that it is not presumption out of which she speaks, but knowledge. Maker, does she know what has brought me out here? Has she seen this all along, and known that disaster was coming?_

_I hear her breath involuntarily catch, and I see Cassandra pivot on her heel, bringing herself around in an eye blink, her hand to hilt. She carefully advances on me on the balls of her feet._

“And you do, Spymistress?”

“I think, perhaps, yes.”

“Cullen, have you taken Lyrium?”

_Cassandra’s voice punctures the air like a dagger slices into the taut belly of a grain sack. It threatens to rupture the little control I have held on with. I gather myself, step back, curtly nod no. Then I hear an exhalation of breath, as soft as a sigh, from them both that neither had realized she held._

“Cullen,” Leliana again, “you need to speak with her. There is more to be known.”

_The words slice at my control, and I can only see before me that damn hobby horse, left to sit in the barn like some sort of absurd shrine. I see it for the enemy of mine it is. I turn toward the practice dummy and throw my sword at it. It strikes, rocking the dummy back and forth on its post, and the sword clatters to the ground. Cassandra reaches and clasps my arm at my elbow, her grip like a vise._

 “Come, she will be looking for you,” Cassandra says and pulls him into the darkness.

_In dread I looked up once more / And saw the darkness warp and crumble, / for it was as thin as samite, / A fragile shroud over the Light / Which turned it to ash._


	7. Chapter 7

Once alone in her room, Dorothea is unable to settle. It seems interminable that Cassandra expects her to sit here and simply wait. But, not knowing what else to do that won’t hurt matters worse, she finally stirs up the fire and adds more fuel to warm the room. It had been odd to see the Spymistress neither in her domain nor in the council room. For her to be about and not stop to debrief Dorothea …

_Cullen. She must be looking for him, too. What could that mean? Has he left Skyhold? Is she sending out scouts now? Light, keep him safe on the roads._

Her brain fizzes with the unanswered questions and reading seems impossible. Dorothea grabs a coverlet off of the bed, and wraps it around her shoulders, sitting down on the hearth rug. The flames mesmerize and focus her attention. Without thought, she reaches out to her magic and works on barrier practice exercises, distilling her thoughts to keep the fear at bay.

Time passes; she doesn’t know if it has been merely a few minutes or if the dawn could come over the horizon at any moment, but with a sharp intake of breath she resurfaces to the present. Her cheeks are damp, and absentmindedly she wipes at them. She realizes now what had caught her attention; she is no longer alone. It is Cullen.

_He hasn’t left._

Dorothea scrambles to her feet. He is still on the last few stairs at the room’s entry, so that his head is flush with hers as she sits on the floor. But once she stands, he has to tilt his head back to keep looking at her. His eyes bore into her with an uncertainty that throws her into doubt.

 

* * *

 

He had stood there, watching her weep, taken with a feeling of sadness for her and for them both. But he does not know for whom she weeps in this tangled mess of three.

_Perhaps she is not sure, either._

Cullen climbs up the steps and crosses into the room. Dorothea stands awkwardly, uncertainty written over her, as if she doesn’t know whether to cross to him and reach into the circle of his arms. Neither of them speaks as each waits and the silence lingers on, both of them taking in the gaze of the other. Neither, it seems, wants to break this fixed moment in their lives that they cannot run from, that they may have in fact been running toward this entire time.

He clears his throat, “Leliana said I should come, that there is more to know. So,” he straightens his shoulders, lifts his head, and focuses on a far point of the world above her head; a soldier reporting for duty, “what is to be said, should be said.”

“Yes,” she breathes softly, and he notices her close her eyes, drop her head, and marshal her resources. His sight falls on the crown of her head, bent toward him in that most vulnerable manner. His impulse is to cross to her and gather her to him, tucking her crown under his chin. But he doesn’t; he cannot begin to fathom how to cross the distance to her. Abruptly, she lifts her chin and looks up with clear eyes, meeting his, “Would you sit?”

Instinctively, Cullen begins to move to the bed. He arrests himself and switches to the divan. He sits stiffly, perched on the edge. If he cannot flee from the crush of what will come, he will at least meet it in battle. He waits for her to begin, his expression curiously blank.

“So, I write music, I mean, I compose music.”

“I know,” he answers with little inflection.

“Oh. Yes. You – you will have seen me. It is something I do to fill the time and to let my mind rest from the exertions of interacting with the Fade.”

“It is … charming.” The last word strangles out of him, threatening to break his composure, his reserve.

_Maker, she is beautiful, sitting before the fire, legs tucked under. Papers are spread out in front of her, she follows along them with her eyes, plucking at the strings of the guitar, from time to time making notes, her mouth working along, silently, on something in her head. She doesn’t know I’m awake and I don’t want to disturb her, don’t want her to stop, so I lay still, listening. It is strangely intimate and I feel protected by the melody she weaves under her fingers. I drift back off to the sound of her playing, feeling safe and reassured._

“After Blackwall left,” she begins again, “so many things began to make sense. When we went to the Winter Palace, I had wanted him to come, we had planned for him to travel with us. But days before the ball he asked leave to stay back, to stay behind. There were so many preparations to be made ready for the royal court that I said yes without questioning. Dorian was so happy to go and I didn’t ask enough questions, gave it little thought at the time.  
“As we came back, Adamant was so soon after. There had been no time to talk, just again to prepare. He was there, though, fighting for us, fighting for me alongside of you …”

_I can’t stop from flexing my hands and my arms tighten. I remember her insistence that Blackwall be in the field with me, coordinating a company. She had tried to say it might be tactically more helpful if he was aware of a weakness in the outside, and could help the forces exploit it. But, I knew it at the time for the ruse it was; she had feared the calling for Blackwall, feared that if they were that close to the source of it all, he would not be able but to hear it. I agreed not because I had a desire to see the man safe, but because if Blackwall had succumbed – as if he could have – he would have been a liability for her, a danger, and I couldn’t risk that._

“… and when I came out of the Fade, back through the rift with Cassandra, Dorian, and Solas, he was the one warden I knew – I thought I knew – I could trust.  
“The Approach was next and he was there, by my side, steadfast. We fought our way through Griffon Wing Keep, encountered so many Darkspawn, captured Servis. Blackwall was invaluable, he took so many risks. Too many. They were long, wild days.” Dorothea’s focus drifts off, caught in the memory, “and I don’t think I had felt as close to him since Redcliffe. When we returned from the Approach it … it was an intimate time.”

“Yes, I know,” Cullen hears himself saying before he can pull it back into his mouth.

“What?” she asks, startled.

He rubs his neck, closing his eyes, then looks up and faces her gaze, “The stables are part of my evening rounds.”

“Oh,” Dorothea whispers into the night; the fire crackles into the silence brought on by memory for them both. “Then you, um, know,” her mind races, she stares into the fire, seeing the last day she had with Blackwall, memories filling in the old pain put aside for more recent joys. “The next morning, he was gone.”

“What followed,” Dorothea continues in a trance, “was excruciating.”

Cullen remembers those days with an indelible pain of his own. The Inquisitor, as he always thought of her then, left so quickly on the man’s heels. If Leliana had not had the foresight, he isn’t sure he would have known Dorothea had even left until after she was half-way to Val Royeaux, she was so driven to follow.

But they managed a rushed delegation, Cassandra, Mme. de Fer, and Dorian, and an honor guard to accompany them, to lend credibility to Blackwall and aid in his Gray Warden business. As Cullen pieced it together with Leliana it seemed plausible that the duty calling the man away (for such Cullen since called him in his own mind, dignifying him neither with the name he stole nor his own that he disgraced) had been Warden business. What else could it be?

Mme. de Fer’s raven arrived within just two days with the awful words.

**Blackwall is not Blackwall. He is condemned. He is a murderer.**

They, none of them, were strangers to courting death, and certainly not the Circle Mage from the heart of the Orlesian Court. Her use of the word was disconcerting. He, Leliana, and Josephine had fought, deciding who to send to advise. Josephine kept insisting she and Mme. de Fer were best equipped together for this, but Cullen would not listen. He knew he could ride harder to Val Royeaux than anyone, that he could reach her sooner. It was intolerable that she was alone.

_Of course, she wasn’t alone. It had simply been intolerable that I was not by her side._

He stormed out of the meeting and began to arrange for his own absence. When a messenger finally did arrive shortly after bringing more details, Leliana came to him with the report. After waiting for him to read it—ten clipped sentences that changed everything—Leliana looked him in the eye and simply said, “Go. Bring her home.” 

The journey went quickly. His small squad of soldiers travelled light and slept little. He arrived, dust worn from the road, to discover that after several days of cajoling (and he suspected outright bribery on the part of Mme. de Fer), Dorothea was in the cells, speaking with the man. In light of Cullen’s position as the Commander of the Inquisition’s military assets, the captain allowed him into the prison and offered to let him accompany the Inquisitor below. He had hesitated at the threshold of the stairs, and ultimately decided to remain above. He did not know what would come next, and if this was her final good bye or some other display of their loyalty to one another, Cullen did not want to witness it.

Once, he heard the man raise his voice, slam his hands against the cells, but the guards below arrested the commotion, so Cullen remained above in the captain’s office, battle-ready, pacing and tense. He remembers the sound of her footfalls on the stair, heavy and slow, as if each step led her to the gallows. But, when she turned the corner, she strode quickly and with purpose, her face looming with darkness made all the more sinister by the glow of the anchor peeking out from the top of her gauntlet.

She barely glanced at Leliana’s report he handed her and seemed so beleaguered by his summation of it that he heard himself saying, “we have resources …”. Cullen had never liked the man, watching him keep her at arm’s length for so many months, at the expense of her safety and her happiness, but suddenly Cullen heard himself proposing to bring the man back with them, to find a way. He would have offered almost anything if he could just erase the look of despair lurking in her eyes.

The same look in her eyes in this moment—whatever this moment is—opening the expanse between them.

“Yes,” Cullen returns to the present, softening his voice slightly, “none of us could quite have known how wrong it had all gone.”


	8. Chapter 8

Cullen relished the intimacies of touch, speech, and thought that defined the last several months of his life with this woman. But he could feel the world that he can touch and discern slip away from his awareness.

During her absences from Skyhold he often finds himself replaying in his mind the texture between his fingers of the short hairs at her nape and the way his palm fits perfectly on her pelvic bone when he pulls her to him, as if the Maker had made him for her, for them to fit together.

She had opened more than just her physical self to him, too, willingly sharing how she was making her decisions to lead and seeking his advice. He has not experienced this with a woman before:  this careful, thoughtful discussion of how to lead, how to encourage strength and allay weaknesses in others. It is exhilarating and thrilling to share that kind of intimacy of thought and strategy with another, to share his mind with the one with whom he shares his body.

The Knight-Captain of Kirkwall -- or Maker forbid the young Templar of Kinloch circle -- could not have contemplated the feeling of rightness that dwells inside him when he is with Dorothea. It is second nature to think of her, to think of the Inquisitor, as his. She is not a possession; she is his completion, what makes him whole.

His Lyrium symptoms, the blue song overwhelming him at various times during this last year, had convinced him that he would never know feeling whole again without the seductive, viscous liquid. Then she kissed him, and he then knew that the blue song was not what he wanted, knew it for the siren call it was. No, what he wanted was the melody of her being that struck a resonance against the thrum of his soul: her melody completes the tune deep inside of him.

But he looks into her eyes, listens to her describe her feelings and her torture over the man who abandoned them all, and he feels as if he is in a ferry, watching the shore fall farther and farther away into the distance. He doesn’t know how to reclaim dry land and can only watch in quiet desperation as the gap grows, the thrum of his soul looking for the high notes.

Dorothea starts again: “watching him storm onto the gallows, behind the cell bars, blithely telling me what he had done, how he ran,” she makes a derisive noise deep in her throat, “ran straight into me. I never did have much luck with men,” she says quietly, but the room is so silent, he cannot help but hear and he goes still, unsure how to respond, chooses to remain silent. “When I walked out of that jail I was so angry that he could use me as a way to redeem himself and then cast me aside to seek death when redemption wasn’t everything he had hoped for.” She pivots and locks into Cullen’s stare, “I was angry, but I was broken, too. I couldn’t face the responsibility of what to do, so I did nothing.  
“I did nothing. I let him die on that gallows. I couldn’t even stay to give witness. I just ran away; ran back to my fortress in the sky; ran from my guilt and my sadness.”

He watches her face. Watches it and recognizes his own torture. Hers, though, is not a fever brought on by the blue song, but a fervor brought on by loss and burden. He can’t bear to be part of this pain, part of the cause, cannot stand to witness it. It would be best—if he cares for her at all, if he can—to lift this burden from her.

_If I love her…_

Cullen has not thought that before, but he realizes that he must do. As he thinks of sending her to the final battles that are coming, agony fills him at the dangers she will encounter. He cannot protect her from that, and he would not try: her work to fight for Thedas defines who she is now and he would not keep her from that which gives her purpose, that for which the Maker created her to do. But if this is how he can lift her burdens, then he will step back and let her grieve her love for Rainier in peace.

Gently he rises from the divan, steps to her, carefully kneels before her, and enfolds her hands into his. She stares down at the touch, tears falling from her eyes to land on her wrists and drop on to the floor.

“It’s all right,” he speaks, “you don’t have to explain. It was too much to expect you to simply move on. No one could talk it all in. You shouldn’t apologize for caring for him, any man would count himself blessed to be so lucky.” He gently lifts her hand to his lips and lays a kiss against the knuckles. “I release you from any constraints. You can mourn him fully. You don’t have to hide from it.”

He lowers her hand from his lips, clasps them together, and releases her. Standing, he takes a step back, turns, and crosses to the stairs, picking his gloves up off the divan on his way out.

As he reaches the stairs, her voice rings out like a bell, “No!” and he turns, startled. She is up on her feet and sprints toward him as if she has been running from the monsters and is preparing to leap.

She crosses to him and in a fluid motion puts one hand on his forearm, the other behind his neck as if to keep his own hand from snaking its way up there in confusion and she propels her face up into his, meeting his mouth with lips that are urgent and firm. In shock, his lips falls slightly agape and she immediately fills his mouth with her tongue, tasting and probing. Her kiss stakes a claim, proclaims her ownership over this affair that he is trying to end.

Not thinking, merely responding to her pressure and her touch, Cullen reaches for her, for she is a wholly different kind of addiction. He throws down his gloves, grasps at her waist, lifts her, and grabs her bottom to hold her, the whole time warring with their mouths. They stand for a few moments, locked in wet, frenzied kisses. Abruptly, she pulls back and looks him squarely in the eye. Intentionally, slowly, still held up by him, her legs wrapped around his waist, she digs both hands into his hair, raises his neck slightly, and licks her tongue from the sensitive jaw line at his ear, lightly tracing to under the rasp and stubble of his chin. She nips at his chin and then meets his mouth in another kiss of depth and longing.

With no hesitation or doubt, he strides with her to the bed, dropping her to the edge and she releases his mouth long enough to begin to concentrate on his trousers. As she unties the laces, Cullen quickly unlatches the side buckles of his breastplate that he still wears from his drill on the training ground. Quickly, she has undone his laces and strips his trousers to the knees. She yanks him down to the bed, swings her leg over his lap and helps to lift the breastplate off of him to discard to the end of the bed.

With that barrier removed, his mouth finds hers again, his hands assisting her with her own trousers. In a practiced move, she stands and snaps them off down her legs, peeling them as one would a ripe clementine. She clambers on to his lap, slams into his chest, and shoves him back onto the bed, his feet still on the floor. Straddling him between her thighs, she places her hands on his chest, looks into his eyes, and in a practice move drives down onto him.

They join fueled by their despair and fear, seeking solace in what the other gives. Climax is soon and loud, shaking both of them and disturbing the rookery through the open balcony door.

Spent of sexual energy, she collapses onto his chest, curled into a ball on top of him, not relinquishing her position astride him. He feels, rather than sees, her weeping, as her face is tucked down and away from him. She whispers, so faintly, a litany of some sort that he cannot hear; perhaps it is the Chant? But he thinks not, catches, “can you guide me to the revolt,” and then it is gone and he cannot hear any more.

As time goes on, and she appears to slip into a trance-like state, he becomes afraid to move her, afraid he will break her further. If he is truly honest with himself he also dreads speaking more. She still has not explained fully about the song, and he does not think he can bear for her to describe in any more detail of her lingering love for the man. Cullen cannot live in the shadow of another man, will not live his life that way. Unsure what is next but wanting to offer her comfort, he reaches his hands up to each of hers, holding them. He rubs his thumbs across the backs of her knuckles, trying to warm them as she has done for him after many a bad episode when the blue song has filled his vision.

Without warning she sighs and stirs, not looking at him and sits on the bed next to him. She rises and picks up his breastplate where they had discarded it and moves it to the armor stand she had moved into her room for him. By the time he sits up, she has moved back to him and kneels to remove his boots, removes his trousers, his smalls from his knees. The feeling of being ministered to, like a small child, is so overwhelmingly sweet that he feels incapable of helping and can only watch. Dazed, he watches her hands drift to his shirt and as she lifts the linen over his head, their eyes meet briefly. There is no smile there for him, but her look is gentle and warm. He is unsure what to say, so says nothing.

She raises and picks up his discarded clothes from the floor, untying the closures on her own shirt which are now loose from their fumbling and grinding. She moves away from the bed, discarding her shirt on the floor as she does. Standing naked, no more than a few feet from him, he can see the entirety of her in the firelight and candles that have burned down. He catches his breath; she is so beautiful and everything he wants in his life. He closes his eyes to the joy of her form that is threatening to break his heart.

Silence lies on the room for a moment and he hears her say, “I’m so sorry,” and he senses her starting to move away.

Her speech startles his eyes open and before he can instinctively ask for what, his mouth opening to do so, he sees she stands on the balcony over the gardens, his clothes still in her hand. Her eyes meet his.

“For this,” she says simply and drops his clothes over the railing.

Cullen’s vision goes white-hot and he rises to cross the room, as if to leap over the balcony to retrieve them. He stops short. He is perfectly naked, as the Maker created him. He cannot begin to imagine how to argue in such a state, let alone think of a way to leave, and as she gathers a robe around herself and around her nakedness, he realizes this was her intent.

“Yes,” she says, tying the robe closed but her eyes never leaving his face. “You need to stay. As Leliana said, there is more to know.”

And he knows he should be angry, but the edge of loss on which he balances exhausts him. Not trusting to speech that will crack and falter, he nods his head. She gestures to the hearth rug to join her and she turns to stir up the fire. He takes the coverlet from the bed, wraps it around himself and follows her.


	9. Chapter 9

Dorothea watches Cullen from the corner of her eye as she moves the fire tongs, stirring up the coals and adding more fuel. She slowly sends heat into the largest of the new kindling, just a barest hint, and the coals do the rest, setting it to a new blaze which amplifies the light in the room. As he sits, she turns to behind her desk where her instruments are on stands and picks up her lute.

Without a word, she sits on the rug by Cullen and begins to play what started this all. She knows Leliana was to call it the Grey Warden song before she handed it over to Maryden, but she has come to think of it as Blackwall’s song. She begins with the instrument alone, picking lightly through the refrain, and then winds in the lyrics. She has never been a noteworthy singer, but she wrote this and her alto is all it needs:

Oh, Grey Warden,

What have you done?

The oath you have taken

Is all but broken.

 

All is undone.

Demons have come

To destroy this peace

We have had for so long.

 

Ally or Foe?

Maker only knows.

Ally or Foe?

The Maker only knows.

 

The stronghold lives on,

And the army's reborn,

Compelled to forge on.

What will we become?

 

She pauses in the lyrics, and plucking the melody absently on the strings begins to speak into the night: “When I returned to Skyhold from Val Royeaux, I assured myself I had been wronged and I didn’t have to think of him anymore.  
“We started the hunt for Samson. Together. I don’t think you can know how essential it felt to be working on something so closely with you. To spend my time on a puzzle that mattered, instead of Blackwall.” She picks the song back up:

Can you be forgiven,

When the cold grave has come?

Or will you have won,

Or will battle rage on?

 

Oh, Grey Warden,

What have you done?

The oath you have taken

Is all but broken.

 

“Solving the riddle of how to deprive Corypheus of his loyal general and trying to rid the Templars of an evil that I knew was killing you inside,” she sighed, “well it was a damn sight more meaningful than my mooning over some lost future.  
“As we worked and waited for information, you were so solicitous … even in the midst of your own suffering.”

Her voice drifts off, her fingers slowing to a stop on the strings. She remembers the shock of the revelation that he was heading into battle with no Lyrium in him. Facing demons and darkspawn without the lull of the magic she herself knew kept her safe.

_It was a struggle to take it in when Cassandra told me. They were arguing, both of them so enraged. After he stormed out, I couldn’t help my reaction, yelling at Cassandra, demanding to know why she would ever let the Commander think of leading in battle in person. It had taken Cassandra’s most patient—if such a word could be used to describe her—tone to explain exactly what Lyrium does to a Templar after a lifetime of service. I was terrified, not knowing which was worse, the thought of Cullen descending into madness because of the Lyrium or being taken by the chaos of the Fade because he had no way to protect against it._

_“Inquisitor,” Cassandra said, “you were in Ostwick, but even you heard the stories from Kirkwall. It was worse than they could possibly say. What the Knight-Commander--what Meredith—perpetrated there was a breach of what is sacred and true. She abandoned her responsibility to the Chantry, to the Circle, to the Order, to her men, and to Cullen Rutherford. It is much like Lord Seeker Lucius: in their despair they broke what they were given to care for. It is not unreasonable, nor unsurprising, that Cullen seeks to distance himself as far from that as possible.”_

_“But, Cassandra, the danger –“_

_“Is a risk, but an acceptable one. The training of a Seeker,” Cassandra continues, “looks for strength and power through discipline, vigil, and prayer. Cullen is capable of all three, and these will see him through.”_

_“To become a Seeker?”_

_“No, I do not think that is his path, and it is no matter as I may be the last of my kind,” Cassandra’s brow furrowed, “but these are things that will help him. Speak to him, Inquisitor. He trusts you and … respects you. He needs to understand that this choice is his and one he is capable of making.”_

“Yes,” Cullen’s voice brings her back to the present, “I regret the things I said and did, to both you and the Lady Cassandra. It was unjust of me.”

“No,” she says simply, covering his hand with hers and looking into his face, “never apologize for being a better man or a better leader. No matter the outcome of any of this, I have peace knowing that the song does not call to you as it did.”

“For a time,” Cullen returns, his voice occluded with emotion, “the tune in my soul was yours.”

She swallows reflexively and asks what she almost fears to know, “and now?”

He opens his mouth to speak, hesitates, closes it, glances at the lute on her lap, and returns his gaze to the fire. She must continue on if she is to right this man she has helped to define these last few months.

_I have to say this right. I cannot unmake him with my own weakness._

Sighing, she removes her hand from his, and begins again.

Oh, Grey Warden,

What have you done?

The oath you have taken

Is all but broken.

 

All is undone.

Ash in the sun,

Cast into darkness

The light we had won.

 

Can you be forgiven,

When the cold grave has come?

Or will you have won,

Or will battle rage on?

 

Oh, Grey Warden,

What have you done?

The oath you have taken

Is all but broken.

 

Dorothea finishes the song with a resonant strum on the last chord and shifts her glance over to Cullen. He sits transfixed by the fire, all of his attention on the flames in front of him. To a less discerning eye, he might appear indifferent; but to her, she recognizes the tension in his jaw, his shoulders, the sinews of his arms straining as he fights to remain calm.

“I felt guilt, Cullen, over Blackwall, I can’t hide it. Such guilt,” she sees Cullen wince almost imperceptibly, his chest rising and lifting in an involuntary motion. “I had purported to love him, and I left him to die alone. I was so convinced that I was right to do so because I was hurt and I was angry,” Dorothea turns her face away at the last, her chest filled with shame.

“But you offered me the most generous gift,” she whispers into the night. “You reset my purpose and gave me drive, renewed my convictions and gave me someone to help: you.” She looks up at him. “It was what I needed. I am so remarkably grateful for it. For a time, it was all that I could ask for.”

“But still,” she continues on, relentless, unwilling to stop the barrage of her words, “the guilt crept back in. I don’t know if you knew, but he had been my plan at Adamant. I let Stroud buy us time out the Fade because I thought Blackwall could—eventually—help to rebuild the Wardens.” The words stream out of her faster, “Despite knowing what was at stake, knowing the decisions I had made, ignoring that he had fought alongside all of us, struggled to be worthy of all of us, ignoring that Hawke was gone, Stroud was dead, and the Wardens all were as broken as Ranier, I left him to die because I felt hurt.”

She sits, hugs her leg to her body so her knee sits under her chin, and stares into the fire. “I was terrified at who that made me be.”

“So, I wrote. I wrote to still my mind, to try to spin his tune out of my being. Wrote my songs so that I could forget him, forget the betrayal, find some measure of peace. I needed to wrap up that piece of me that felt like I should never have left that jail, that I had left my duty behind and followed my own, selfish desires. I wrote thinking I could put all of that into a song.”

“All is undone.”


	10. Chapter 10

With that final revelation, Dorothea drops her head to her hands and presses her palms over her eyes. Cullen stares over to her, unmoving, unable to take it in precisely. Of course, he knew after Val Royeaux she was in pain, but had also known that the man who left was arduous and taciturn at the best of times. He had not fathomed the magnitude of guilt that she felt.

Stupidly, Cullen had truly believed she was happy, moving on, loving him. Trying to breathe deeply to slow the thud of his heart in his ears, Cullen clenches his jaw as he realizes he was a distraction from any chance she had to heal.

_I don’t know how I could have thought otherwise; it moved so fast._

It had been little more than a few weeks after they arrived home from Val Royeaux that they had kissed for the first time. Looking back, he did not know how he could have been so blind.

“You needn’t worry,” he speaks into the silence, striving to keep his voice clear, “this will not affect the counsel I provide or the leadership I give to our soldiers. You do not have to hold me. The surge of withdrawal symptoms has completely passed,” his mouth dries at the lie he passes over his lips, “and it should not interfere again. You do not need to sacrifice yourself for me.” Feeling, rather than seeing, that she turns her gaze to him, he consciously avoids her eyes. His resolve teeters so close to the edge; to look into her face would be to be swept away.

“But what if I want to?”

Cullen hears her voice as if from far away, the plaintive cry of a need he fears allowing himself to hear.

She continues: “The fear and guilt that festered in me was because I wanted to be worthy of you. When I fell in—for—you, I understood how little I had had with Blackwall. But I was ashamed at how I had come to you, the things I had done. Because if he hadn’t ran and I hadn’t left him to die I would never have seen you there, in front of me, the entire time.”

Cullen catches his breath and shifts his glance to stare at the hand she has placed on his knee while she has been speaking. The vision of her long, beautiful fingers begins to blur as if underwater.

“Do you not see, Cullen? It’s not my love for him that made me feel guilty, it was my despair at how grateful I was that he was gone. It made me feel ashamed about what I have with you.” She shifts closer to him, kneeling in front of him. “You are effortless in a way that no one has been my entire life, I find such joy in you. How could I burden you with this darkness of my shame?” She cups his face with her hand, the other drifting to his cold fingers. She lifts his face to meet her gaze. “I couldn’t bear to be ashamed of this, so I had to reconcile myself to everything I’ve done this last year. Whatever the masks I’ve worn, the horrors I’ve committed, the parts of myself I’ve had to burn away, all of it has led me here, to you, and I cannot disavow any of it. For what if by doing so, I changed my path to you? How could I bear it?”

“Cullen,” a plea, “it’s not a eulogy. It’s a plaint, a lament for all of my questions, all of my accusations to our Gray Warden who wasn’t one, and my acknowledgement that his failure was his own, not mine.”

Cullen listens to all she says and knows the solidity of every word as each sentence shores up the part of him that broke tonight in the tavern. Come the end of the world or come the end of her, he knows now with certainty that it will make no difference to him because either can only result in his utter dissolution.

He cannot live as if she does not matter; his duty to her is all that matters. Tears still stinging his eyes and blurring the corners of his vision, he pulls his hands out of hers and reaches for her waist. With great, intentional care he pulls her onto his lap and into the circle of his arms. Gently he leans his forehead into hers, breathing in her scent of jasmine and sandalwood.

Dorothea places her hands on his face, her palms resting alongside his cheeks and jaw, her fingers stealing into his hair, and gently bends her mouth to his. He feels the fullness of her lips on his and gratefully he receives her kiss, a wordless promise she speaks with her mouth, and the kiss deepens as they reassure each other that the storm has passed.

He sighs and hears the harmony.

**Author's Note:**

> Create Order #1  
> Posted 02/09/2016


End file.
